Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon meringue pie is one of three pies that I know how to make, which is a real shame because pie is my favourite dessert, so I should really learn to make more. Anyhow, this recipe is taken from allrecipes.com. I can't claim any credit for it, though I did change one small detail. It's super-yummy and my husband said that it was "perfect." High praise, indeed.

You will need the following ingredients for this recipe:

-1 cup white sugar
-2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
-3 Tbsp cornstarch
-¼ tsp salt
-1½ cups water
-2 lemon's worth of juice and zest
-2 Tbsp butter or shortening
-4 eggs
-6 additional Tbsp white sugar
-1 9-inch pie crust (I just used a store-bought kind)

Separate the eggs. They don't come in until later, but I just want to warn you that you will want to separate them. DISCARD NOTHING!

The filling is the first part. So, in a saucepan, combine the 1 cup sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt. Then stir in the water, lemon juice and lemon zest.

When you squeezed the lemons (because I know you used fresh lemons - not artificial lemon juice!), you probably noticed that some seeds came out. Maybe you tried to remove the seeds from the lemon beforehand. Maybe lemon seeds are why you used artificial lemon juice (bad!). Instead of these silly things, just squeeze the lemon juice into a bowl and pour the juice through a little strainer like so:

That way, none of the seeds (not even the tiny ones!) will get into your pie filling.

So, cook that baby at a medium-high heat. Here's the confusing part, because the original recipe says "until mixture comes to a boil" and then a few steps after it begins talking about thickening. I don't know what thickening agent that author used, but it must not have been cornstarch. Cornstarch begins thickening very, very quickly - it's not going to wait until after your mixture has come to a boil. So, go ahead and let the mixture thicken and come to a boil, but make sure you are stirring frequently. If you don't, the mixture will burn.

Stir in the butter. The original recipe calls for butter. I used shortening. Worked just fine.

So now your mixture is thickened and boiled. You are now going to address the egg yolks. So, you have your egg yolks separated. Whisk them together really quick, then add is a little bit of the lemon filling (about ½ cup total) and stir it up, then add the egg yolk mix back to the filling and stir it in really well. I love this part because it gives the filling a really rich, yummy-looking yellow colour.

Next you're going to take your nice, thickened filling off the heat and pour it into the pastry shell. A quick warning to my Jewish/Muslim/vegetarian friends out there: lots of store-bought pie crusts are made with lard. Lard=pigs! Look for a Kosher sign, such as this:

If you see that, you'll know you're safe. Because Jews don't eat pigs. Because gross.

Now, the meringue! The meringue is very simple. Place your egg whites into a medium-sized or large mixing bowl and whip them (I see them hand whip on TV, but I highly recommend an electric mixer) until they're foamy. From there, continue whipping them, adding a little sugar at a time. I usually add one Tablespoon at a time. Keep whipping until the meringue can hold its shape (more or less - I never whip it super-super stiff). Then spread it over the filling, sealing at the edges.

Cook at 350° F for twelve minutes. The meringue should be golden brown and scrumptious-looking.

Enjoy!

Quick and Easy Margherita Pizza

My dad just went to Italy recently and he informed me that a Margherita pizza is just a pizza with tomato sauce and cheese. My suspicions, however, are that he did not even have any Margherita pizza in Italy and he is just pretending to know what he is talking about. In fact, what he was thinking of was pizza marinara. Duh. Pizza Margherita or - in English - Margherita pizza (hard translation, that), is made with fresh tomatoes and basil and che- well, I won't get ahead of myself. The point it, I was right and my dad was wrong. Hah!

This recipe is as easy or as hard as you make it. You will soon see why.

You will need the following ingredients for this recipe:

-Pizza dough
-Tomato sauce
-Fresh mozzarella
-Ripe tomatoes, sliced
-Fresh basil
-A little olive oil

So, as far as the dough goes - that's really what determines the ease of the recipe. You could make it from scratch, but pizza dough takes a while to make and homemaking dough is a royal pain in the you-know-where, so, in the immortal words of every mafia gangster ever, forget about it.

My method was very easy. I bought those little frozen dough loaves from the grocery store, covered one with oil and covered it to thaw. When it rose, I had my husband cut in in half and roll it out on a floured surface, then put it in our little pizza pan. It wasn't perfect, but who even cares?

Lightly top the dough with pizza sauce. I just used a store-bought kind. Garlicky. Yum!

For best results, I urge you to use fresh mozzarella. My husband couldn't stop raving about how delicate the flavour of the fresh mozzarella was compared to that of the non-fresh variety. The packaged mozzarella you get at the store has a bunch of salt in it, which really changes the flavour. Fresh mozzarella is... well... fresh. Ours came in a little bag and it was about a handful. Just slice it up and up it on the pizza. Don't worry that there are cheese-less gaps. It will melt.

Slice the tomatoes. Add them to the pizza.

I used a small handful of fresh basil leaves. I recommend soaking them in olive oil first so they don't dry out in the oven. Place the basil leaves on the pizza. Easy.

Cook the pizza for 15-20 minutes at 425° F.

This was a small pizza, but it was sufficient for my little family of three. If you have a huge appetite or a larger family, just make more. It's so easy and I made it all within a half hour.

Enjoy!

Super-Easy Stir-Fry

What more is there to be said about this recipe? It's super-easy and quite tasty, too! It's even vegetarian and it may be vegan, too, but I forgot to check the ingredients on the Shanghai noodles package.

Anyhow, you will need the following ingredients for this recipe:

-1 Tbsp oil

-¼ tsp sesame oil

-1.5 oz beansprouts

-1 small red pepper, thinly sliced

-1 small yellow pepper, thinly sliced

-2.5 oz (about 7) white and/or brown mushrooms, thinly sliced

-5 oz Shanghai noodles

-¼ cup sweet chili sauce

-1 Tbsp soy sauce

Now, usually I would not recommend using olive oil for the 1 Tablespoon oil because olive oil has a really distinctive flavour and it doesn't really go well with this type of cooking. However, if you're short oil (as I was when I was making this), it turns out that olive oil works just fine because the other flavours are so bold, you don't notice the olive-ness.

So, you'll be starting out with your 1 Tbsp oil and your sesame oil in a wok. Heat it up. Always make sure to heat up your oil before you cook with it.

To be honest, I did not measure out 1.5 oz beansprouts. I just took a small handful. This is not a

recipe of precision. The proportions of the peppers, mushrooms and beansprouts look like the picture on the right, here. Feel free to use that for reference, or not.

Once your oil is nice and hot, add in the peppers, mushrooms and beansprouts and stir-fry until the peppers are soft.

At our grocery store, when you buy Shanghai noodles, they come in this tiny package all squished together and it just kind of looks like one mass of noodle. If that's how it looks for you, do not fret. They do come apart. It's a bit of a pain to do and you'll want to do it before you add them to the wok. Anyhow, 5 oz is approximately ⅓ of that noodle mass in the picture.

Add the noodles to the wok, as well as the sauces. Stir well and keep stir-frying until the noodles are nice and hot.

This is how your plate will look like when you're finished. This stir-fry does not mess around when it comes to yumminess.

But in the mean time...

Enjoy!

THIS RECIPE IS:

Cooking Tip: How to Care for Mushrooms

Holy moly, has it ever been a while! Well, never fear, for I am back (for now!) with another useful tip for the kitchen.

So, true or false: you buy mushrooms at the store, you pop them in the fridge in their plastic container and when you're ready to use them you take them out and eat them as they are.

If you selected "true," then you should read this post!

Mushrooms should never ever ever be stored in their original container. I was very bad and bought mushrooms the yesterday and put them in the fridge without changing the container and even in the past 24 hours, some of the mushrooms have gotten mushy in some spots.

The best environment for mushrooms is in the fridge in a brown paper bag. They need to breathe! However, they shouldn't be stored for too long because they tend to take on the odors of the fridge since they are so porous.

So, now you've taken your mushrooms out of the brown paper bag you put them in when you got home from the grocery store and you pop one in your mouth or in your stir-fry or on your pizza without batting an eyelash... right? WRONG!

Look:

See that mushroom? See those little brown spots? You may think that that's just part of the mushroom because even white mushrooms aren't perfectly white. Well, you're right about white mushrooms not being perfectly white, but not all those spots are supposed to be there! That's right, folks, some of them are....

dirt!

So, what do you do? Well, it's very simple. First you run the mushroom under cool water and rub it gently. The dirt should wash away easily. You might have to work a little harder at mushrooms you bought bulk (not American bulk, which is called "wholesale" in Canada, but Canadian bulk, which means that you picked which mushrooms you wanted and put them in the bag yourself, as opposed to the pre-packaged ones).

Then you pat the mushrooms dry with a paper towel and let them hang out with some of their mushroom buddies until you're ready to use them!

See? Easy peasy!